Don't Kvetch, Organize….(OK, you can Kvetch a little, but then try to get over it and organize)

Heathrow Airport, December 2010. Airport was closed by Ferrovial 100% owned subsidiary, BAA causing airline delays, complications throughout Europe and beyond. So much for how “efficiently” Ferrovial runs Heathrow. As I recall, Denver does get more than five inches of snow each winter.

As a trade union friend of mine noted concerning the Denver D.I.A. – Ferrovial contract – just noted “the horse has left the gate…but what the hell?”

A local trade unionist, he posses fourteen questions concerning the deal. Before posting them below, I thought the blog reading public might be interested in one particular article:

The essence of the piece: In December, 2010, the British government had to bring in the troops to clear five inches of snow from Heathrow Airport because Ferrovial, which manages the airport refused to do so, cheap so and so’s. So all this talk at the recent city council meeting in Denver about “how efficiently” Ferrovial subsiduary, BAA, runs Heathrow, is a bunch of poppy cock?

So BAA didn’t have the will or the wear-with-all to clear five inches of snow from Heathrow…but they are going to all but manage D.I.A. for 34 years? How did all those well-informed politically astute members of the city council miss this? Here is another article on the subject:

Here the questions my trade union friend asked about the deal. Some have been answered, most not.

Is this the largest privatization in the city’s history? (Winter Park?)

Denver developed DIA and controlled its concessions without privatization, why is it necessary to privatize the Great Hall expansion?

What research has been completed on Ferrovial? Was adequate due diligence applied? Who conducted the due diligence? Were consultants used? If so, who were they?

Has the administration consulted closely with the three airports in the UK where Ferrovial has similar contracts? Is there a written comparison of the Denver contract with those in the UK? Wasn’t this a critical part of the necessary due diligence?

Most members of City Council likely have not carefully reviewed the proposed contract and conducted a full review which is understandable given the complexity of the contract, although the 150 page document should have been reviewed by all members.

Is the Council aware that Unite, the largest union in the United Kingdom, was forced to conduct a two-year campaign costing over $4 million, to stop Ferrovial’s union busting on a construction contract for the largest public works project in London for many decades.

Our political system operates on the principle of separation of powers. Everything we have learned about the Ferrovial contract has come from the executive branch. Why hasn’t the president of the City Council asked the city council staff (six member staff) to conduct its own review of the proposed contract in the manner that the Congressional Budget Office provides an independent review separate from the executive branch?

Has Ferrovial agreed to sign a written neutrality agreement to ensure that its operations will not be adverse to the right of workers to unionize as determined by federal labor law and also to hold its concessionaires to it?

The involvement of Saunders, a local construction company, appears to have good relations with construction unions, although questions have been raised about its close relationship to the administration in the awarding of the contract.

What was learned about Ferrovial in the junkets taken to Ferrovial operations in Spain and the UK by both members of DIA, the city administration, and members of City Council?

Was there true transparency in evaluating the various bids? Why hasn’t the City Council or citizenry been fully informed why Ferrovial was awarded the bid with all of its problem?

What are Denver’s legal rights to end the proposed contract if the contact if is not fulfilled?

Last night, at a meeting which began on August 14, 2017 but ended on August 15 at 1:15 am in the morning, the Denver City Council approved a $1.8 billion renovation project the contract of which will span over 34 years to reorganize the security system at Denver International Airport (D.I.A.). The proposal was essentially strong-armed by Mayor Hancock and his staff through a mostly pliant city council. The council, excluded from the negotiations, was given a week to read a 15,000 page contract before being forced to vote on it.

The management for the project, as well as a good deal of authority of the D.I.A administration, was handed over to a consortium of businesses, the main participant of which is Ferrovial S.A, a Spanish corporation whose bread and butter has been airport construction and administration. Ferrovial has an 80% share in the arrangement.

In the end, despite long-winded and generally boring rationalizations that went on ad nauseum until after 1 a.m. in the morning, the vote wasn’t even close. In its overwhelming majority, the Denver City Council had swallowed the Kool aid of what is referred to as “public-private partnerships. In a vote in which the council sold off what little is left of its soul, it voted 10-2 for the project with one abstention. Only council persons Rafael Espinoza and Debbie Ortega voting and speaking clearly against the project. Others, among the generally more liberal (or thought to be) members of the council,who for one given reason or another voted in favor of the proposal included Paul Lopez, Paul Kashmann, Robin Kniech. Stacy Gilmore, who claimed a possible personal conflict of interest concerning a brother-in-law, abstained. Read more…

It is a little (a week or so) early to look for mushrooms in the Colorado mountains but given the recent cooler weather and a series of rains providing needed moisture, we (Nancy and me) figured we’d give it a try. But with global warming and drought filled years here in the Southwest, there have been slim pickings. I have gone up every year, but these past three or four years have come back empty-handed or almost. Still every summer about this time we are driven up to the high mountains by some force larger than ourselves to hunt for mushrooms. Friends often ask stupid questions or make like-minded comments – “Did you find any psychedelics?” No, frankly we wouldn’t even recognize them. As we did thirty years ago, when Jukka and Paivi Kairkkainen first took us on our first mushroom hunt a bit north of Helsinki (Finland), we continue with the tradition of searching for edibles. Read more…

The one entrance – just off of South Sante Fe Blvd – leading to the Overland Golf Course club house. Is this the road that 50,000 to 75,000 people will travel to get to the concert?

Last night (July 31, 2017) I had the dubious pleasure of attending a Denver City Council meeting.

The last time I visited these sacred chambers was some years ago. My friend Paula Van Dusen, me and a couple of others organized a grass roots campaign to get the city council to pass a resolution against the U.S. led war in Iraq. Our little group did good grass roots door-to-door work that resulted in hundreds if not thousands of phone calls to the then city council members, who were not happy campers to hear from their constituents, despite often parroting how lovely-dovely they are with each other.

Our informal survey – taken from our brief discussion with neighbors – suggested that the good people of Denver opposed the war somewhere between 20-1 to 30-1. It was a close vote, with then District One city councilman Dennis Gallagher casting the decisive vote for the resolution, this as I recall, after being hounded by the good nuns of the Sisters of Loretto and a couple of peace types like myself. The next day it made page 1 news in the now defunct Rocky Mountain News. The article was accompanied by a major editorial of the day, in the Rocky, slamming the council for voting for peace…even if was only a symbolic gesture.

Ah but that was yesterday and yesterday’s gone as is the Rocky, which a good friend referred to in an email as “The Rocky Mountain Snooze.”

Actually yesterday, I attended the council meeting to watchdog a neighborhood zoning change but the main item on the agenda was the final vote on Superfly Production’s proposal to organize a super music festival in southwest Denver at the city owned, Overland Park Golf Course. As reported in the Denver Post, (Aug. 1, 2017) “The Denver contract allows for a three-day weekend festival each September on Overland Park Golf Course, with each event staged the second or third weekend of that month beginning in 2018.”

The promoters are predicting anywhere from 50,000 to 75,000 will be in attendance. Just another example of the privatization of everything, of the private sector stealing public assets (in this case, cheap infra-structure). We’re not talking about a run-of-the-mill concert but a massive three-day “Woodstock” like affair, and like Woodstock (that this blogger attended with a sister and her best friend) it has all the makings of a logistical nightmare for the city.

In fact, essentially what Superfly has done is to package Woodstock in yet another case of coopting the heritage of the 1960s. Cited in the city council meeting, but left out of the Post article, are the fees to be charged to the public, $677.80 for a day pass, but only $1659.80 for the entire three days. I mean, how could anyone pass up such a neat deal. The entry costs appear prohibitive, but these prices didn’t seem to phase the city council members at all. Read more…

There is a Senate bill, along with a companion bill in the House, working its way through Congress with strong bipartisan support, that poses a significant danger to free speech. One would think this bill would be a big deal but, surprisingly, the bill has not received much coverage in the mainstream media.

Fortunately the American Civil Liberties Union is alert to efforts undermining free speech. Thus, in a July 20th article on the ACLU website about S. 720/H.R. 1697, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Bryan Hauss, Staff Attorney, wrote:

“The bill would amend existing law to prohibit people in the United States from supporting boycotts targeting Israel — making it a felony to choose not to engage in commerce with companies doing business in Israel and its settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Violations would be punishable by a civil penalty that could reach $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.” Read more…

Sitting in a Middle Eastern restaurant, not far from the University of Denver in 2013, a former colleague, who had “drunk the cool aid of humanitarian intervention” (and still imbibes), pontificated how Assad’s Syria would fall in a month, just like Khadaffi did in Libya. Didn’t happen. This year (2017) alone, already, first Aleppo, in western Syria, is liberated from ISIL-al Nusra, seven months later, Mosul in Western Iraq follows suit. As in such urban fighting, the damage is horrendous, but this is war and these are VICTORIES, not defeats for progressive forces, as Washington’s plans of partition for both Syria and Iraq continue to dissolve.

Intro Remarks:

As we have done in past shows over seven years, our goal tonight is to deconstruct mainstream narratives and then actually discern what is actually transpiring with U.S. Middle East policy.

We want to begin with discussing some aspects of the recent Aspen Security Forum that was just completed (July 19-22, 2017) as they relate to developments in the Middle East, especially Iraq and Syria. This is a follow-up on another important annual gathering of “strategic thinkers” – the Herzliya Conference in Israel (which took place June 20-22, 2017

Then we want to discuss the liberation of Mosul, Iraq from ISIL that was completed earlier this month (July, 2017) and how it shifted the balance of power in the region, its implications for Iraq, Syria, ISIL and U.S. policy. ISIL, al Nusra are little other than the mechanisms used to partition the region by global (U.S., UK, France) and regional (Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia) hegemons. Partitioning (what were) strong centralized states (Libya, Iraq, Syria) into smaller units makes them more manageable for energy consortiums, and core-economy governments.

U.S. plans to partition both Syria and Iraq are in disarray, given the gains made on the ground (Aleppo) by the Syrian military and the liberation of Mosul by Iraqi forces. Read more…

The U.S. has Tunisia in a bind…again: support U.S. Middle East political initiatives and allies or else the aid or face serious reductions in military and economic aid. No mystery where that could lead. What choice does Tunisia have…having already dug its hole so deep. Although much has been made of the fact that Tunisia has not been plunged into the chaotic political maelstrom of Libya or Syria, the continued chronic economic and social crisis that has gripped the country places Tunisia in a vulnerable position where it is difficult to go against the wishes of Washington (or Paris).

It’s an old story, actually.

Tunisian Prime Minister Youssef Chahed came to Washington recently (July 10-12, 2017) to plead his country’s case against the Trump Administration’s plan to cut its aid package to the North African country from $141 million (2016) to $54.6 million in (2018). In a meeting with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Chahed was presented with a list of eleven “concerns,” one of which was a request (demand?) that, in exchange for maintaining the aid package at the 2016 levels that Tunisia support U.S. efforts to stifle efforts in different United Nations organizations critical of Israel.

Having the US pressure Tunisia to side with Israel at the United Nations (or elsewhere) undoubtedly creates tension between the Tunisian people and government undermining the stability that the US claims it is pursuing in the Maghreb. It is a case of typical U.S. political blackmail in which the influence of the American Israeli Political Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and like organizations is more than likely. The threat is not especially subtle: if Tunisia wants to continue to receive U.S. economic and military aid it must follow “the rules of the game,” be a part of the team…and to play the role it has long played under Bourguiba – to push the Arab/Islamic world to normalize its ties with Israel in exchange from political and economic support from Washington.

Let’s be frank though, Tunisia’s weight in all this is so little that it doesn’t have much to lose by accepting these terms. No one in the Arab world listens to it – be it Bourguiba or Beji-Caid Essebsi-Ghannouchi – who is voicing such a policy. In exchange for badly needed economic and security aid, Essebsi will probably be willing to swallow his national pride without much hesitation, mind you, and cave to such pressures. Read more…